Escaping Civilization, but Not His Former Family

Ulysses is one major oddball. Not the hero of “The Odyssey,” in this case, or James Joyce’s novel, but the wreck of a middle-aged American man portrayed in Sharr White’s “Annapurna,” which is the strong and poignant opening production of Theaterworks Hartford’s 2014-15 season.

This Ulysses (Vasili Bogazianos) is standing in his cluttered trailer, wearing nothing but a very short apron, frying sausages, when his ex-wife, Emma (Debra Jo Rupp), whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years, turns up at his door, carrying enough luggage for a grand tour of Europe. The main reason for her visit is the imminent arrival of their son, Tom, who has hired a private detective to track down his long-lost father; Emma wants Tom not to be too horrified at what he finds. Emma has also just left her second husband, but that’s another story. Ulysses is dying of emphysema, but that seems almost irrelevant.

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Ulysses (Mr. Bogazianos), is a former professor and poet who, broke and dying, has retreated to a trailer park in the mountains.CreditLanny Nagler

What’s odd is that Ulysses frequently utters lines like “Nothin’ you ain’t seen” (when she objects to his bare quintagenarian buttocks, the first glimpse of which gets a hearty but sympathetic laugh from the Hartford audience) and “You don’t got to say it like that.” And then Emma says things like, “Your publisher won’t reveal anything.” It seems Ulysses, before drink and heaven-knows-what-else ravaged his life, was a poet, a New Yorker and a college professor, who taught — get this — English. Apparently, when a man runs away from civilization, he leaves behind any former aversion to double negatives.

Granted, Ulysses was a cowboy type when Emma met him, but the character’s language comes off as ignorance rather than folksiness. Ms. Rupp, best known for her role as a Midwestern mom on the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” brings plenty of her own folksy persona to the game. She was delightfully believable as Dr. Ruth Westheimer when she starred in “Becoming Dr. Ruth” last year at Theaterworks (the production later moved to Off Broadway). But then Dr. Ruth specializes in a kind of Eastern European folksiness. Here, Ms. Rupp seems like exactly the kind of woman Ulysses might have been married to in his youth, but it’s almost impossible to imagine them at faculty teas at Columbia.

Both Ms. Rupp and Mr. Bogazianos are thoroughly charming, and their emotional connection feels genuine. When Ulysses learns the truth about why his wife took their 5-year-old son and left him in the middle of the night all those years ago, Mr. Bogazianos rises to the occasion in his breaking down into sobs of sorrow. He may not reach to the bottom of his soul, but he makes it clear that Ulysses has one.

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Ulysses and Emma on stage.CreditLanny Nagler

And Rob Ruggiero has skillfully directed the characters and story he has been given. It’s the playwright who puzzles me. Mr. White’s first hit, “The Other Place,” earned glowing reviews and a Tony nomination for Laurie Metcalf when it moved to Broadway. It, too, focused on an educated spouse (a scientist) who, in the course of a serious illness (dementia), has to face the truth about what happened long ago to her child.

“Annapurna,” which began its Off Broadway run just six months ago, was not met with equal praise, but it shows off Mr. White’s strengths, among them masterly exposition, a fine ear for the language of intimacy and a taste for universal humor. At one point, Emma is explaining her son’s resentment of her.

Emma: “I didn’t! ... Ruin his life.”

Ulysses: “Why’s he think you did?”

Emma: “He’s in his 20s. They all think that.”

Evan Adamson’s scenic design is all too realistically rustic. Don’t you imagine that if, God forbid, everything in your life fell apart and you ended up broke living in a trailer park somewhere in the mountains, that at least your trailer would be filled with books and art and a couple of treasured pieces of furniture from your past, somewhat more gracious life? Ulysses’ place is such a mess that when Emma starts setting out an army of brand-name cleaning products and a fresh package of paper towels on the kitchen counter, some of us wanted to cheer as she put on rubber gloves and started scrubbing away. Maybe the setting is the playwright’s comment on the precariousness, the liquidity, the elusiveness of identity. Maybe the grammar is, too.